Crawford backs out on funding

October 01, 2003|By Laurie Lounsbury, Staff Writer

CRAWFORD COUNTY - Crawford County commissioners clearly aren't happy about the circuit court decision made by Judge Dennis Kolenda regarding benefit funding for the 46th Circuit Trial Court. Kolenda ordered the county to pay all money owed to the court by the counties. And while Crawford County chair Lynette Corlew maintains they still want to work things out with the court, they're concurrently laying the groundwork for an appeal.

"I'm hoping we can continue to work toward a resolution with the court without appealing, but if the pieces don't fall into place, we'll definitely appeal," Corlew said.

Part of the appellate preparations include a reversal of the county's initial willingness to fund benefits for the 46th Circuit Trial Court in the 2004 fiscal year.

According to Otsego County administrator Denise Koning, all three counties' representatives seemed willing to reach agreement for the proposed, 2004 court budget. However, Crawford commissioners decided Sept. 16 not to fund the retirement and health care benefits that were the source of contention in the circuit court trial.

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"Since our resolutions and approvals will be considered in an appeal, we didn't think it would be in the best interest of our case to approve these benefits," said Corlew. Crawford was the first county to pass a resolution for court funding, because their fiscal year begins today, Oct. 1.

Otsego County chairman Lee Olsen said the amount of money being withheld by Crawford is $50,000.

"If they don't pay, business can't go on as usual," Olsen said. "And if we can't get together and work this out quickly, one of our next steps will be to notify Judge Kolenda."

Kolenda still has jurisdiction over the case, and may order Crawford to pay its share of the benefit funding, an order the county anticipates.

"We will set aside that amount of money in a separate account in case we're ordered to pay it," Corlew said. But paying due to a judge's order will not give an appellate judge the impression that the county willingly funded the benefits, Corlew explained.

In addition to not funding its share of court benefits, the county took several other steps to prepare for an appeal.

Crawford commissioners voted to authorize the Lansing law firm of Cohl, Stoker, Toskey and McGlinchey to hire appellate attorney Allan Falk of Okemos to prepare the appeal.

"Peter (Cohl) told us it won't cost that much to prepare an appeal, since they have all the information from the trial, just a $350 filing fee and approximately two hours to prepare the appellate brief," Corlew said.

Tom Kienbaum, attorney for the circuit court, had a different estimate of the cost to prepare an appellate brief.

"You've got to go through seven days of trial transcripts and thousands of pages of evidence," Kienbaum said. "It would have to cost thousands of dollars. I would estimate an appeal of this scope would cost somewhere from $10,000 to $25,000."